Bangladesh Cricket Board is all set to seek explanation from Allan Donald for pointing fingers at Shakib al Hasan as he appealed for timed out against Angelo Mathews during their game against Sri Lanka at Arun Jaitley Stadium on November 6.
Mathews became the first cricketer in the history of international cricket to get timed out. The incident took place during the 25th over of the Sri Lankan innings when he arrived at the crease after the dismissal of Sadeera Samarawickrama.
Mathews brought the wrong helmet when he joined his partner Charith Asalanka at the crease and he signalled to his teammates at the dugout to bring the right helmet to him.
The substitute ran out with the correct helmet but the umpires weren’t happy with the action and Bangladesh skipper Shakib took no time to appeal for a ‘timed out’ dismissal.
Mathews tried to explain the matter to Shakib as well as to the umpires but Bangladesh didn’t overturn their appeal which made the umpires give the Sri Lankan out in this ‘rare’ fashion.
Shakib received severe criticism from different quarters for his action and Donald joined the bandwagon as he felt it was disappointing to see such things on the cricket field.
“It was disappointing to see. I can understand Shakib taking his chance. His words were ‘I was doing everything to win’. You can sense in my voice that I don’t like it ,” Donald said during an interview with CricBlog.Net conducted soon after the Bangladesh team returned to team hotel following their three wicket win over Sri Lanka.
“I don’t like that sort of thing. It was really difficult to watch that unfold – one of Sri Lanka’s all-time greats walking off the field without a ball bowled to him being given out for time. That’s where I stand on that,” he said.
“You talk about the respect and the dignity for each other and for the game, the spirit of the game. I just don’t want to see things like that. That’s just me. I just don’t want to see that sort of thing in our game where, okay, someone was sharp out there and said ‘well, you can appeal’. I was like, ‘really – this is not going to happen, this cannot be happening, this can’t be happening,” he said adding that rather than appealing Shakib should have reacted other way round after seeing Mathews helmet strap got out.
“The most sensible thing would have been to just to say, ‘okay, no worries, mate, sort your helmet out quickly; you have time to replace it’,” Donald said.
“My immediate reaction when that happened – and this is just [that] my instincts would have taken over – is I almost actually thought of going on that field and saying, ‘enough is enough, we don’t stand for this; we are not that kind of team who stand for this’. That was my immediate thought.
“Things happened so quickly, but you’re talking about authority and I’m not the head coach, I’m not in charge. I just saw Marais Erasmus [the umpire at the bowler’s end] say, ‘please Angelo, you can now depart the ground’. And, seeing Angelo pick his helmet up and then walking off and throwing it against the advertising boards; it just was… I was surprised,” he said adding that he saw anger in the eyes of the players while they did not shake hands.
“There was anger. The only word you can use, really, is anger. At the end of the day then, like I normally do, I’m almost out there on the park first shaking hands and I just knew that these guys were heading for one place and that’s the dressing room. There was no eye contact at all, no conversations, nothing. I don’t know, a lot of these cricketers today can call me old-fashioned but I just don’t think there is any place for it. I just don’t think so,” he concluded.
BCB officials revealed that the outburst from Donald had come under their knowledge and maintained that they would seek clarification sooner rather than later.
“We have seen the news quoting Donald and we are taking that seriously. We will certainly seek an explanation in the coming days,” said an official, suggesting that they don’t want to distract the team ahead of their important game against Australia.
A win against the former World Champions will all but guarantee them a place in the next ICC Champions Trophy considering seven top teams in the points table will qualify for the tournament along with hosts Pakistan.
